Women at Work - Helping Men Help Us

Episode Date: June 1, 2020

We get an update on what men are doing or should be doing to support the women they work with. And we talk about our role in helping them help us. Guests: Brad Johnson, David Smith, and Lily Zheng. Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. I mean, I'm interested in this topic of male allyship because I think there's so much going on around this topic. I see it come up at conferences. I see books being written about it. How can men be involved in the effort to make workplaces more equitable. And I feel like women need to have a say in how those efforts are carried out so that they're most relevant for us and they support us in the ways that we actually need support. What we can take away from this is insight into how to make those well-intentioned efforts really work. Yes, that's exactly it. Like if people are going to put effort into helping us, and as you say, they're well-intentioned, how do we help shape them

so they actually give us what we need because that's the whole purpose. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Gallo. And I'm Amy Bernstein. This episode, we'll be getting an update on what men are doing or should be doing to support the women they work with. And we'll talk about our role in helping them help us. First up, my conversation with Brad Johnson and David Smith. Brad is a psychology professor at the United States Naval Academy.

Dave is a sociology professor at the United States Naval War College. They wrote about how and why men should mentor women in their book, Athena Rising. And they're coming out with a new book, Good Guys, How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace. So, Brad and Dave, thank you so much for joining us in these unusual circumstances. Glad to be here. Great to be here with you, Amy. So I want to talk about your book, Good Guys. I know the subtitle is How Men Can Be Better Allies for

Women in the Workplace. And in some ways, a lot of the advice is for men, but I found it useful as a woman. And I'm curious how you expect or hope women will respond to or interact with the messages in your book. And Dave, maybe you could start and Brad, of course, want to hear from you too. I think the important part here is that we are all in this together, right? And so it really is about gender partnership. And for too long, it's been men who've been making the rules and the workplace has been set up for that and, and not willing to change or understand how it's affecting others in the workplace, in particular women in this case. And so I think what we find is that

when we work together on this, we can find more commonality in how we change the workplace so that we can all come to work and thrive and get the most out of our business as well as for ourselves. And I would just add that, you know, it's important to recognize there was just a big study by Ferry Godb Boss recently of 400 men. And it was really interesting that about 87% really wanted to be part of the solution when it came to gender equality in the workplace. Over half of those guys said, you know, I really just don't know what to do. I don't know how to begin, how to wade in.

So very often, I think women can really collaborate with guys and coming alongside and helping them get better and maybe figure out what steps they could take immediately to make the workplace more equitable. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about what that work looks like. There's lots of advice about how to do this in your book. And I'm curious if you think there's, you know, more to be done around sort of promotion efforts in terms of like mentoring or sponsoring or prevention efforts like calling out sexist behaviors or bias in promotion systems, for example. Is it really one or the other? Is it both? How do you think of it? You know, in the research that we have just finished for Good Guys, it really became apparent very quickly that there were sort of two broad categories of things

that men were doing when they showed up really as allies for women at work. And one was the interpersonal, right, the real relational stuff. And so these were the guys that were showing up as real colleagues, willing to be friends, willing to engage in mentorships, interested in how their female colleagues were experiencing the workplace, asking curious questions. But the other part was the hard part, and that was doing the public systemic things, you know, calling stuff out when they saw it in the workplace. When a guy makes a really inappropriate joke in a meeting, the ally usually says something, hey, stop that, or that's not appropriate,

or I didn't appreciate it. And he's also looking for systems in the workplace that aren't fair, and that don't work for everybody, and willing to lobby and advocate for changes to those systems. Yeah. Do men tell you when you talk to them about this work, about which aspect is really hard or is there something else that's really hard? Like what do they most struggle with? Yeah, I think in our conversations we've had with men, there's a couple categories. One is those who kind of see the problem, understand the challenges that women are experiencing in the workplace, but then knowing what to do, right? And I think there's a lot of that struggling going on right now. And they're

looking for solutions. They're looking for answers. They want to be part of that solution. And then there's another part of this that where we've got to continue to develop awareness of what these challenges are for those who don't necessarily see the problem or write it off as, oh, it's not that bad or it's not as bad as we think it is, or gender inequities are not that prevalent in my company. And again, there's a lot of great books and publications out there today that are talking about the experiences out there, but I think more importantly, making the personal connections with the women that you work with that are most important in your own work career out there, because hopefully they'll give you the unvarnished

truth. Right. They'll tell you what it's really like. Yeah. I'm curious what the role of fear is in the journey to become an ally. I've certainly heard people express the concern that it's like a minefield. How much is fear holding men back? And what do you say to men who say they are nervous about getting it right? Yeah, guys get themselves into trouble when they just say something like, I'd like to mentor you. And of course, I just use my creepy voice, but they're worried it's going to come across that way. So we encourage guys to be specific. Hey, I saw you do that presentation. I was so impressed. I want to make sure we keep you here. If you'd ever like to have a conversation about next steps, feel free to stop by. So be

very contextualized. And I think you have little to worry about. Right. I liked that example of what that sounded like. I would immediately think, great, I'll go talk to Brad sometime. You know, there's a fine line between wanting to uplift women, wanting to support them, but then also benevolent sexism, this idea that women need protection, and that's what you're providing. How do you recognize that line as a man or as a woman and make sure you stay on the right side of it? There are probably a whole bunch of things, Amy. I mean, you know, Dave and I often encounter the problem of making assumptions, number one, about women. So we work on this with men a lot, you know, just take this fill in the blank test. Women must want

or women must need or, you know, because she's a woman, she wouldn't want this. And I think men often get themselves into trouble without actually taking the time to get to know female colleagues and check in with them and find out where does she want to go and what's her career dream look like and what's sort of the ideal situation for her. I'd love to understand that before I think honestly about what I could offer or who I could connect her with. I may not even be the best fit for the mentor, but I could introduce her to the right person. But I really got to check myself on assumptions. And of course, I have to watch myself when it comes to the whole rescue man script that, you know, I'm going to rush in if I see her having a hard time in meetings or,

you know, whatever the context may be. It would be very easy for me to get on my horse and charge in and say, you know, let me take care of you. And I'm also going to become kind of hyper hierarchical and directive and tell her how she should change her game at work. And often that's a lousy way to begin any kind of relationship. Yeah. The giving advice is particularly tricky. We've published a lot of research on HPR about how you want to give advice that's relevant for the person. And many of us try to give advice that's relevant for us. You talk about before giving your advice, consider how that approach may not work for the woman you're trying to help. Any advice on how to give advice to women when you don't fully understand what works for them and what doesn't in an organization?

And let me actually maybe get a little more specific there, because I think it might help. Telling a woman to speak up in a meeting or to be assertive in a negotiation, we know from research, can backfire for her. So when you know that's what's worked for you and you see that's what worked for men, how do you give advice that's more relevant for women? I think that I would at that moment, Amy, love to make it just part of my ally collegial conversation with a colleague and just do some honest self-disclosure and say, this is what I found

worked for me, you know, because I've struggled maybe with something similar. This worked for me as a solution. But having said that, I'm not sure entirely it'll work for you. What do you think? Dave and I are big fans of allies pre-gaming meetings, right, with colleagues and saying, okay, so we've seen before that in meetings you get talked over, you get interrupted. How should we approach this moving forward? What role would you like me to play? Because I don't want to undermine you. I really want you to be heard, but I want it to come from you and be your voice. So how could I amplify what you're saying? Let's sort of game plan that together. We had a really interesting example. This particular guy is an engineer in the aerospace industry. And he was telling us how

with one of his female colleagues, who was a black woman, she was preparing for a presentation with another group of engineers. And she was talking to him about the presentation, doing a little bit of this pre-gaming, which was great to hear. And one of his bits of advice, again, she was open to the advice, but the advice that he gave her was that, well, you need to kind of come into this with a little bit of a swagger, kind of in-your-face, very assertive kind of approach to this presentation with his engineers. They really

respect that. And she just looked at him with this look on her face, like, really, I can't do that. And he looked at her and he said, oh, you're right. You can't. And it led to a very productive conversation after that, right? It kind of adjusted how her approach to it would be in terms of kind of a balance of credibility and expertise, but being much more kind of engaging with the audience with them and not as in your face, which I think is kind of a nice little balance that worked really well for her. Yeah. Well, and I like it also because they work together to figure it out. Yeah. So you both have been studying this, working in this area for a while. What have you seen just in the past few years, two or three years, have changed with men's behavior in this

area? Dave and I have really seen a lot more men's groups and a lot more individual men focused on what they can do in the workplace to generate more equality and equity. And one of the ways we're seeing it are, you know, these grassroots male ally sort of initiatives in a lot of companies and organizations. So these are guys who get together with other men in the company just to talk about their role in making the workplace better, especially for their female colleagues, but also for everybody and other commonly disenfranchised groups at work. And so we're seeing that. We also see guys showing up at women's conferences and joining women's ERGs in companies, right? Wanting to be a part of that conversation. And that is entirely new. I really think a decade ago, you would not have seen men showing up at those kinds of events. And so we think that's great.

That's part of our advice for men. You got to show up. You got to go to women's conferences and go to events in your workplace that revolve around gender. Here's the thing, though, how you show up matters. And so too many guys, I think, show up and think, I'm going to become a spokesman or I'm going to wade right in and tell women how they should do this. And so our advice is really just the opposite. Show up and be quiet and listen, learn, stay the whole time, sit right down front, take notes. If you ask questions, ask really good clarifying questions. And then maybe at some point, you know, ask your female colleagues, how can I best contribute to this?

Show up, but do it in the right way. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash womenatwork. That's netsuite.com slash womenatwork. Hey, listeners, if you want to hear from more leaders to help you answer questions like, Thank you. Mudupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from setting smart goals to the latest

on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from Mudupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk about what's happening at this moment. Are you both concerned about this crisis having an effect on this work and possibly causing some regression in the progress we've made? You know, I think, Amy, there was certainly, I think a lot of us felt that in the first, probably about the first week or two we were home. And I'm not sure if it was just the uncertainty broadly, or if it was specific to the fact that we do work in this area around, in particular, diversity, inclusion, and gender equity. But what we've found is that I think that there's an opportunity here to do more and to take advantage of this and really not lose ground, and really to continue to advance and take the momentum further.

And one of the places in particular that Brad and I really like to focus on is remember that you're all home teleworking and you're there if you have kids with your kids who are home from school right now who are doing whatever online courses or school they're getting or learning whatever skills at home. And so you're all home together there. There ought to be an appreciation for what it's like for all of us to be at home and what those responsibilities look like. And this is a chance that, again, gender equity, we're talking about it in terms of in the

workplace, but it really starts at home, right? That we can't be great allies just at work. We have to start at home and be great allies at home first for our partners and for our children. And again, the research bears this out that there's a great set of outcomes here for our kids and for our workplaces out there that, you know, again, we're role modeling as all in equal partners as dads for our sons. And their expectations about what gender roles look like and how we divvy up responsibilities in the home versus work and what careers look like, they're going to take that with them when they go to the workplace. And then for our daughters, when they see us, again, role modeling equal partnership at home, they're much more likely to go on and achieve their career aspirations and stay in the workplace and go further in the workplace today. So the research really bears us out as well. So

what a great opportunity. We're all kind of stuck, so to speak, at home right now, doing the right thing here, being socially distant with everybody else, but not with our family. It's great family time and for us to learn. And if you don't know, if you're being a good equal partner, it's time to ask. Yeah. I also would say, Amy, I am worried right now that men might deprioritize engaging with female colleagues, especially those that they have agreed to mentor, right, or were mentoring before. And I would say this is not a time to lose momentum. I would say real mentors and real colleagues show up right now. And I don't think it's a heavy lift to send an email and say, hey, just want to check in with you and see how it's going there. I know this is a challenging time. If you have got concerns about job or workplace or just how you're balancing things, feel free to check in with me by

teleconference or phone. I'm always happy to make time for that. So, you know, that kind of psychosocial demonstration of care and social support, this is a golden opportunity for men to practice with that if they're, you know, a little unsure about how that might look. Now is a great time also to do the sponsorship. So message to men, if you are aspiring to really promote a high-talent junior woman in the workplace, what a terrific time right now to network her in, right? Introduce her to a couple of key people that she could begin corresponding with. If there's a crucial online meeting or a Zoom meeting you're having that she was not invited to, what a great time to invite her to that meeting just to give her some face time and exposure.

So all of that mentoring and sponsorship can absolutely continue, I think, right now. Yeah. I'm curious if you have any thoughts, because I know you talk about how to make sure women are heard in meetings. Any advice or tips about how to deal with this in the online environment since we're all doing these virtual meetings? And how do men step up as allies in meetings when it's all video or phone? Yeah, I think it works in some similar ways at the online virtual sessions as well. Because meetings, I think at the end of the day are kind of meetings and much like Brad just said, one is take notice

of who's in the room. So you're going to have to, in the online environment, look on the side, on the sidebar there and see who's in your meeting. And if she's not there and she's the expert or it's her project or her work, then find a way to get her invited in, or maybe you can do that on your own. But then once you're in the meeting, when she's there, again, women's competence and expertise tends to get overlooked. And we see this in a host of different ways, including, you know, how we use titles and language like that. But also if people are deferring to the men in the room and she's being kind of overlooked or ignored,

this is an opportunity for us, again, as allies, where the focus comes to us, then you can say your short piece, but really, I'm not the expert here, Amy is, and I'd really like to hear what Amy has to say on this. Right. Yeah, I like what you're saying in terms of both this situation presents new challenges and that many things could get deprioritized. But it's also opens new opportunities to try out different ways to be more supportive, especially if your work has slowed down.

This is something you can spend your time doing, right? Thinking about how do I support women in my life, both at home and at work. I do want to ask about men who talk a good game, but then actually don't follow through. And I've certainly worked with these people. Typically, they tend to be people in power who, you know, we support women, we support women. And then, you know, women aren't getting the promotions. They talk over them in meetings. I'm particularly curious how you recommend women deal with this sort of fake or in-name-only allyship.

Yeah. So this is an issue that comes up a lot, Amy. And, you know, Dave and I do get this question quite a bit. And so, you know, you can call these guys fake male feminists or superficial allies or ally posers. I like that term. And I think kind of the advice for all of us, men and women, when it comes to these characters is kind of a show me the money attitude, right? So I would really look to see what the behavior looks like and i think all of us you know men and women need to be willing to point out these incongruities because you'll see these guys

you know throw on their ally cape in the workplace right and sort of come off that way to their female colleagues and then a few hours later he's in a meeting with all men making misogynistic comments or telling really inappropriate jokes. Certainly the men in that room who are genuine allies have an opportunity to point that out. And I think pointing out the incongruities, I love that advice, but that just seems so hard to do as a woman, you know, especially because I think a lot of these posers are people in positions of power. So how do you call out, you know, hey, CEO, or hey, you know, head of my division, you say you support women, and yet your entire leadership team is made up of men, right?

Like, how do you call that out? Sometimes it's just, you have to just do anything, right? It's the old see something, say something. And it doesn't have to be a lot. And it doesn't have to be, hey, we're going to go to DEF CON 5 here over a comment, especially if it's a senior leader. Yeah. You're making me think about a situation I was in where I wish I had said, I'm curious how that decision we're making here lines up with our commitment to, right? It's very easy to express platitudes about how we're going to support women, people of color. But then when the actual decision gets made around who do we promote, who do we hire, who gets the important project, a lot of that commitment sort of falls apart. Yeah. And Amy, I love that. I think of that as confrontation through Socratic question, right? It's that well-placed Socratic question can do more to disrupt, you know, this kind of incongruence you're talking about than anything else. And, you know, so Dave and I will use this if we see a guy do what we call bro-propriate, right? He takes a woman's idea

in a meeting and kind of passes it off as his own, rather than say, hey, you jerk, you just stole her idea. It's very easy to say, you know, Bob, that's a great idea, but I'm a little confused. How's that different than what Cindy said 10 minutes ago? You know, it's just a Socratic question, but it draws clear attention to who had the idea in the first place. And I think that's often an overlooked technique. I'm going to interrupt you and manter up you, Brad. Oh, no. But interruptions are the other one, right, that we often see. And again, it happens all the time. And it's just as hard for guys in some cases to say something

as it is for women. You know, and Brad and I've had this experience before being in a meeting and there's a guy in there who's interrupting a woman. And then you actually even point it out and go, excuse me, Bob, but Alinda wasn't finished there. And I really like to hear the rest of her idea and what she had to say. I think this is, she's really onto something here. And then sometimes it doesn't work. They just keep talking right over you, but you've at least called it out. And the rest, everybody else in the room sees it now, too, whether they really saw it for real or not. Most of the people we understand who listen to the podcast are women. But of course, we all want to know, how can we support male colleagues to better support us? Any advice for women on the best way to encourage this kind of behavior? Yeah, well, I'll just give a quick example, I think, of, you know, right now during the pandemic work from home environment. If I have a great male ally or maybe a male mentor and I'm running into some

problems, you know, related to the work environment, maybe I'm not included, for example, in a key meeting and no one ever thought to include me in that, you know, reaching out to my male colleague and saying, hey, can I just share with you I wasn't included in this? I know they're going to be talking about my clients or my ideas. Do you think that you could get me invited? Or do you think you could kind of represent my point of view in the meeting? Sometimes just letting a guy know what would be really useful, because he just may not be thinking about it, but he's more than willing to jump in once he has kind of a sense of how he might be useful. That's great.

It reminds me a little bit of advice we gave in an episode last season about sponsorship, which is that as the sponsee, one of your main responsibilities is to make clear what your goals are, make clear what you want. And I think that's great advice for women who are looking for male allies is make clear what would be helpful to you. Brad and Dave, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been really a pleasure to speak with you both. Delight to be here, Amy.

Thanks for including us. Thanks, Amy, for having us. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work.

That's netsuite.com slash women at work. So, Aimee, having done the interview with Brad and Dave, I'm wondering if you have taken any of their insight into your own life and how you're using it. It's definitely made me more aware of how men in my professional life are supportive or not supportive. And I mean, especially in this current situation where we're all working remotely, those efforts to support women and their careers have to be much more intentional. And so I feel like I'm not seeing as much of it as I might have seen six months ago. But when it happens, I mean, there's someone who just recommended me to be a speaker at a virtual conference, and he's a man. And that felt very much like a conscious choice on his part to recommend a capable woman. And I really appreciated that. But I think a lot of that work seems to be not top of mind right now. I think people are just so distracted by other things that I'm worried that a lot of people, this is not top of mind for men and for women who want to ask for this type of support. Our next guest says that this weird COVID pause is no excuse for letting efforts on this front slide. Lily Zhang is a diversity, equity and inclusion consultant and executive coach. She works with a lot of men who are leaders in their companies and helps them build systems and cultures that are better for women. Lily was last on the show in season three when I talked to her about gender ambiguity in the workplace, which is the title of a book she co-wrote. Since then,

she's co-written another book, The Ethical Sellout. Lily, thank you so much for speaking with us today. Yeah, thank you for having me. It's great to be here again. So I wanted to ask you about your experience with male allies. Have you had male allies who've helped you with your career? I've had a few. I think the one that I can think of most prominently is somebody close to me who was an executive at a major company who stayed close and connected with me over the past five or six years. And what's been effective about that allyship? So it's funny. I don't think I would go out there and label this person an ally just because they don't fit my internal model about what an ally looks like. But I would say that this person's given me really helpful guidance and mentorship. And that's been enormously helpful because he's clearly navigated a different world than I have in a lot of ways.

And I'm really lucky that he thinks about the world in the same way that I do. He understands that organizations are complex. He talks about organizational context, the situation. we talk about the things that I need help with, he is always very thoughtful in saying, well, here are some things that I've learned dealing with similar situations, and here are all of the reasons why these situations happen according to what I understand. And so it never comes across as him, you know, being arrogant or him just sharing what's worked for him but rather us working together to unpack why I'm seeing what I'm seeing why he's seen what he's seen and then apply what we know to let's say troubleshoot or workshop ways to make it better it feels very collaborative it feels

very constructive and I always get the sense that like we're tackling some big problem together and never that, you know, he's being a white knight or he's, you know, swooping down to save me from my ignorance or anything like that. Yeah. So what does allyship mean to you, Lily? was making a genuine, measurable, positive impact in the well-being and success of the group you are allying with. And I focus so much on measurable well-being because it is work. Allyship is work to make better systems, better organizations, better organizational cultures. And I think it's not soft work. I don't know where the impression that allyship is sort of soft, fuzzy, feel good stuff came from, because it's hard. Like when you ally with someone, you are committed to tangibly improving their life. So many men want to do this work. I'm curious, in your experience, what is standing in their way? on the interpersonal and relationship-building aspects of this work, and almost entirely fail

to consider the systemic aspects of this work. And what I mean by systemic is really looking deep to understand how allyship relates to building better organizations, building better organizational cultures, policies, practices, processes. I think these are the areas where inequality really embeds itself. And yet most of the men I talk to are limited to thinking about allyship in terms of, oh, this man used the word bitch. And if I get that man to stop saying the word bitch, I am a good ally and the workplace is better, which is not false, right? That is a correct assumption. But in my understanding of all of the work that this entails, right, of allyship, that is the very tiniest tip of the iceberg. We don't need

like one man to stop using the word bitch one time, right? Like that's, that's important. But what we need is to not be discriminated against, to have, you know, fair opportunities for promotion, to not be, you know, hired at lower rates than men, to not have constant microaggressions in our companies, right? These are, these are all more complex, deep things than getting people to use word X instead of word Y. You were talking about allyship on a structural and systemic level. And it sounded as if encouraging allyship is a matter of discouraging certain kinds of behavior. But what about the other side of it?

Are there systems that actually foster allyship that you've seen? What do they look like? Yes, absolutely. Let me give you a very specific example. I remember Brad and Dave talking about meetings at some point. And that conversation was about, do you have tips to help women be heard in meetings? Their entire answer focused on things men can say to help women be heard, right? So they said things like, oh, find a way to invite a woman in, have men deflect the conversation back. And the entire time I was listening to that, I was like pulling my hair out,

going like, how about you have meeting norms, right? How about you have shared expectations that you don't interrupt people in meetings? How about you have, you know, shared expectations that if this is an exploratory meeting where everyone's opinions are useful, that you don't end the meeting unless everyone has had something to say. Like, all of these things are not only more high impact, but are just more doable than relying on, you know, one good guy, Joe in the corner to speak up to single handedly stop sexism, right? Like, that's not how this work happens. And it's, in fact, easier, like, now I don't have to rely on my like, one good guy in

the corner, we can do this work of designing, let's say, meeting norms and expectations, collaboratively, and collectively. Like, that's the sort meeting norms and expectations collaboratively and collectively. That's the sort of systemic work that I think we need to be doing more of all the time, everywhere. That is, in my opinion, quote unquote, real allyship, not just asking for individualist solutions that rely on individual men to make individual contributions. I do want to push back a little bit because I do think in some ways what Brad and Dave are doing

is trying to get people who are really hesitant to collaborate with women because there's fear about Me Too, there's fear about not knowing what to do. Like so many people are at, they're sort of three steps back that the systemic change is hard for them to even conceive of because they're focused of three steps back that the systemic change is hard for them to even conceive

of because they're focused on their interactions. Right. And I'm curious, like, how do we get those people to the right place? So this is, this is a kind of meta answer and please feel free to push me on it. I don't think that those are people that are coming to me. People are not going to come to me, a woman, to ask how to have these very basic conversations with women. They're going to come to Brad and Dave, right? That's great. I think it's really important to have men who can guide other men through that sort of one-on-one work. Like that absolutely has to happen because these men are in a place where they just can't hear it from us. Part of allyship

is also recognizing where you have unique reach or influence. And if Brad and Dave are able to be in this spot, this position where men can listen to them, then I would absolutely say that they themselves are being excellent allies by playing a role that I could never play. Yeah. Well, and actually what you're saying now also makes me think as a woman, of course, when I'm going to involve myself in those collaborative efforts that you're talking about, I'm not going to go to the guy who's shifting in a seat when I approach him or looks nervous. He's not there yet. Exactly. Yeah. So I'm going to go to the person, I mean, I think of a former coworker I had who

said, you know, I'm a white male, I have a lot of privilege in this organization. How would you like me to see me leverage it? Right? Like, that was someone I think I could envision having these more systemic conversations with how can we change the system? Right. So I want to ask about a piece you wrote for HBR.org, Lily, where you were talking about how companies should adapt their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts to the reality of the COVID crisis. So how do you think men should be adapting their allyship efforts to this crisis? Okay, so my immediate thought is that since so many men are in leadership positions, I think that these folks should be building more channels for feedback

and communication from women to the organization to figure out their needs. And I say this because I want to stray away from recommending that men, you know, brazenly do any sort of outreach themselves. If the women in your workplace have communicated and given feedback and, you know, feel safe enough to ask for coordinated action from men, do whatever it is they are asking for. We are the folks who are most able to understand our needs in the organizational context. And so the goal is to build processes that can facilitate us sharing our needs with the folks who are in positions to meet them or address them or solve them. So, you know, quick answer, what can men do? Build a good feedback channel, right? Build a sense of psychological safety such that women can feel comfortable reaching out to you to begin with.

Right. And what if you suspect that women have feedback to give, but don't feel comfortable giving it? What kind of steps could they take? Yeah. So that's, that's psychological safety. And there's all sorts of recommendations for that. I actually really liked an HBR piece by Frank Dobbins and Alexandra Kalev in the last month or two. They talked about ombuds. It's restorative. It's anonymous. It's flexible enough to allow women to solve conflicts in the way that they need, right? It doesn't immediately devolve into, you know, high profile punishment of men. Fantastic system. So you could do something like that to create a means for conflict resolution and feedback, honestly, that is more psychologically safe than what we currently have. And I can keep on going, but, you know, building psychological safety is something that you do

through organizational culture and through developing processes and systems like ombuds. You've touched on this a little bit, but I want to ask a little more directly. What do you think of the idea that women play a role in helping men become better allies? I mean, it's true, I guess, to the extent that like, you know, women need to help men understand what the issues are, you know, so that men can fix them. But because I don't think of allyship as solely interpersonal, I think the idea that like, you know, us women have to use interpersonal strategies to help men be interpersonally better to us just kind of sounds silly, right? Like, if men can't interact with us, like that's that kind of sounds like a personal problem.

And they should maybe work on it with other men who can help them out. If we're talking about systemic stuff, how can women help men make organizations more psychologically safe? That's a great question. But then I'm wondering why we've specified women as a group versus men as a group at this point, right? So, yeah. So that really gets to something that I've been chewing on since we started this conversation, which is that we're talking about allyship and we're talking about male allies to women,

but all of the recommendations you've given really seem like good management to me and being collegial, you know, not interrupting, making sure people are heard, that if you follow these rules of the road, that you will get better outcomes no matter what you do. So what you just said really triggered that. So let me share with you one more sort of core tenet of how I do this work, because the critique that I've heard a lot of this approach is it sounds awfully close to diversity blind. And I am absolutely not, right, taking that stance. I think identity is absolutely important in this, but you are right in that I focus the work that I do on these sorts of like universal decent management practices. One of them being understand and recognize the differences that people experience because of their social identities,

right? As part of your approach to just designing better for them. So I think rather than saying all men as a group need to do this to all women as a group. Instead, we can say, here's work that we need to do to make workplaces better. And here are some challenges that, let's say, the inequalities in our society around gender exacerbate. Here are some disparities in how the labor market treats women, for example, that we need to understand. Here are some experiences and thoughts that women have in general throughout this process, and this is why they occur. Now that we understand that, how can we design to do better? So it's less about you're a man, you must help people that

identify as women, and more, we're just doing this work because it's better for everyone, right? And we're going to take into account identity and difference as it helps us understand this work. That makes sense. Yeah. Hey, Lily, what do you think of all of these employee resource groups that are so popular now? Yeah, so we've seen employee resource groups for a while, for a few decades. But what's been interesting is men have been joining them and men have been looking to become, you know, more active in them. And it's a very interesting conversation because I think the way that we've positioned employee resource groups hasn't been examined for a really long time. They sort of take up this hybrid space between advocacy and support. So an employee

resource group is a space, for example, for women to get together and to help each other and to support each other, to share resources, and then also to advocate for, you know, more changes to the company to be better for women. Now, historically, these two functions have been very much linked together to the point where men are saying, look, we want to make the company better too. So they're talking about advocacy. We want to make the company better too. So we want to participate in this group. And women are saying, we have a support group that is for women talking about discrimination. And so we don't want you there because it's not safe for our women, right? You could even be the person involved. And men are getting really upset and frustrated

because they're saying, you're sending me mixed messages. Do I join or do I not? This is the only way that I can help, right? Like I want to help, but now you're telling me that I don't belong here. And I think we need to get better at defining what women's spaces actually should be and where spaces should open up. We need to create advocacy spaces that aren't tied to employee resource groups. We just need to make, for example, a working group on improving the experience of women in the workplace that's open for literally everyone to join of any gender from any background. Then we need to very clearly have, let's say, an employee resource group space that is just for, let's say, expecting mothers or something, right? And we're going to be very specific. People that are not expecting mothers or expecting parents, I guess, are not allowed in this space.

Right. Like this is just not something that talk about their unique experiences as parents. Maybe they will have some presentation at some point, right, for the entire company. And of course, you're welcome to come to that. But this is a private support space. And we've had a lot of confusion so far because employee resource groups have just owned all of it up till this point. But you're saying be clear about the purpose. Exactly. Lily, thanks again for joining us and for sharing your wisdom with us. This has been great.

Well, thank you so much for having me. One of the things I loved about Lily's take is that she was just, you know, no BS. She gave that kind of self-val valorizing approach that Brad and David definitely discouraged, but Lily gave it no quarter. She has no patience with it and she calls it out. I think Lily really pushed us to think about things on a systemic level. Totally. And acknowledging that so often it's men in power in companies or in organizations. And therefore, some of the best allyship is changing those systems is using your power

to create structures and norms, where men don't have to intervene in bias, because the expectation is that that won't be there. Right. And at the same time, what she makes clear is that allyship is really just the beginning, that it is the system that takes over, right? Right. And I thought that was a really important point. We also have to consider men who aren't in power. How can they be allies? If they're not in a position to be able to call for or make systemic change, how do they be allies? If they're not in a position to be able to call for or make systemic change, how do they act as allies in meetings and, you know, day-to-day interactions

with women? And I think Brad and Dave really shared a lot of that, you know, but to Lily's point, there's limits to that effectiveness if we're not going to make also larger scale change. It has to happen on the individual level, but it won't really make enough of a difference until it happens on the systemic level, on the organizational level. Yeah. I'd actually like to see what Lily and Brad and Dave could come up with together. That's our show. I'm Amy Bernstein. I'm Amy Gallo. Our editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoke, Adam Buchholz, Mary Du, Tina Tobey-Mack, Erica Truxler, and Rob Eckhart.

Take good care.